Docsplainin' -- it's what I do

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Monday, August 25, 2014

Things have been a little hectic in the Wood household lately, and I've gotten behind with posting -- again.

I'm back, but only because I stumbled across something someone else wrote that is so brilliant that I couldn't not share it.

A Facebook friend of mine has just been through a hideous, traumatic breakup. A couple of days into it, she wrote this:

158 Days with the Love of Your Life

I found myself wondering
this morning how we could ever expect the people around us to keep their
promises to us when we don’t keep the ones we make to ourselves. I
wondered if we let people ruin us with lies about love because we’ve
never really taken the time to fall in love with ourselves.

I think maybe we do.

I was in a serious relationship for
five months with a man who I believed (and my family and friends
believed) was the love of my life. I was becoming friends with his
ex-wife, spending time with his utterly adorable boys, and between the
two of us, we were at each other’s places at least four days a week.

I have a long history of entangling myself with sociopaths; a
step-father who led a double life with a second family, a live-in
boyfriend who hid another girlfriend from me for a year and tried to
strangle me when I finally confronted him with her in tow, another who
conveniently never told me he went back to his wife… But it’s been 12
years since I’ve been tripped up by a pathological liar. I thought maybe
I had managed to learn to read the signs.

Then I got a Facebook message from the love-of-my-life’s girlfriend
on Thursday night, the one he had been seeing the entire time we were in
a committed relationship. I honest to God had no clue. He was swapping
out her things and mine depending on who was spending the night at his
place. He was texting us essentially the same “I love you baby” texts.
(I know because I’ve seen the screenshots as well as the sexting videos)
He told me his mother was relentless and called him worried every night
if she hadn’t heard from him. Of course, now I know he wasn’t talking
to his mother. What a brilliant way to be able to tell another woman you
love her while your girlfriend sits there smiling fondly at you… (Oh,
and he and his ex-wife didn’t have an open marriage like he explained –
at least not her side of it. So all those other girlfriends I heard
about were just years of him doing what he does, what he was doing to
me.)

Anyway, this isn’t about revenge. I wrote this all down for me to
heal, not for me to hate. I’m just explaining what happened because it
was quite possibly one of the most destructive things that could have
happened to me emotionally. (To anyone perhaps, but my scars here run
very very deep and they were gashed open again and now deeper.) The
worst of it is the voice in my head that keeps screaming, “WHAT IS WRONG
WITH YOU? Why do these people find you? Why do you let this happen? How
can you be SO FUCKING BLIND. You know why everyone always betrays and
abandons you? YOU ARE TOO BROKEN TO EVER BE WORTHY OF LOVE.

BUT I’M NOT. I’M NOT. FUCK YOU. I’M NOT.

And I’m not the only woman (or man) to be here in this dark place. I
know we all get better. Time heals. Yadda yadda. But that’s not enough
this go round. I want to meet that voice head on. I want it to shut the
fuck up.

So I’m taking back every day I gave him. Over the next 158 days, I’m
going to date myself and do everything for myself that I did for him…
and little bit more. And yes, because I know there’s a joke in there, I
do mean sex as well. Girls, feel free to PM me with your sex
toy/technique advice. And to anyone who thinks that’s crass or is
pondering juvenile jokes, so be it. Love is a full package deal that
includes physical touch… even if the only one doing the touching is
yourself.

So I’m going to see if I can fall in love with myself. I’m going to see if I can be my own best friend.

I’m not the only one. We are all so many of us broken-hearted. So I
challenge you too, my comrades of the torn and bloodied heart— for the
next 158 days, let’s love ourselves. Maybe my list will help you make
your own.

THE ROMANCING STARTS NOW…

Make promises to yourself that you mean. Then keep them.

Run. Run until there’s no more hurt. Run until you’re healthy. Run so that you can be completely there for yourself.

Praise yourself for your successes.

Hold yourself when things are bad. Promise yourself you will do everything in your power to make it better.

Remind yourself repeatedly that you are a good person, but no one is perfect. And that you love the imperfect parts too.

Be thoughtful. Put gas in the car before you almost run out. Make
coffee the night before a busy morning. Do kind things that make life
easier.

Send cards. Leave yourself adoring and funny notes.

Make yourself laugh.

Take yourself out with friends so they can see what an amazing person you’re dating.

When things get rocky, have a talk with yourself. Forgive yourself. Give yourself another chance to be the partner you deserve.

On day 158 write yourself a long love letter. – the one you wrote
him the morning before you found out about the betrayal,—the one where
you will be there through the rough patches, the one that lists all the
things you love about yourself including the quirks and faults. Write
this letter and know that you can be certain that every word you write
about you is true. That the five months of romance were real.

Then recommit. And then maybe I can let someone else into the relationship too.
Sadly, I suspect that loving myself is going to be one of the hardest
things I’ve ever tried to do. But the list starts with a promise and I
promise that I am going to commit myself to this relationship. I’m going
to start by sending myself postcards. Here I need your help, friends…
If you are willing to help me, please drop me a line. I’ll give you
something to write on a postcard and ask that you mail it to me on
random day over the next five months. Or… if you are someone who has
read my writing, you can pull a few lines from one of my books or posts
and send them. This I’m sure, will help me stay on track.

I told her, and I meant it, that this was brilliant, that I had never, ever said anything even close to a client after a terrible breakup. And I asked her permission to repost this.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Hard as it is, I've made the decision to monetize the blog. I've put the ads only at the bottom, so most of you should never be bothered by them. I've blocked those annoying animated ads. I've blocked weight loss products. And anything to do with any of the various F0x "News" commercial enterprises is, of course, fox-blocked.

As other as-yet unforeseen obnoxious items pop up, I'll block them on an as-we-go basis.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Digital Photography School put up an article the other day on using photography for personal growth. The woman who wrote it, Catherine Just, was struggling with being a new mom, and
found herself taking a photo every day of the part of the process that
was the most frustrating to her. In her case, it was not being able to
get the little sprat to take his naps. She wound up with some emotionally stunning iPhone pics of herself and
the bébé sleeping together. She said the photos -- and her attitude --
changed in about a month of doing this.

I had been
wanting to document Mr. Wood's last year? journey? something, and struggling
for a way to do it that captured our emotions but was respectful of his
desire for privacy. For example, I wanted to go with him to the barber
shop when he got his head shaved the other day (his hair and beard are falling out from the chemo), but he would have none of it. The
notion of a daily photo of something that frustrated me really
clicked, because that wouldn't necessarily be about him at all, but I
still spent two or three days trying to figure out what the theme needed
to be.

And finally, a light dawned. I'd been noticing a lot of nights, when it's time to
go to bed and I discover I haven't cleaned up the kitchen yet and I'm
already tired and my legs are already giving out, that I've been
surveying the wreckage and saying to myself, "I'm tired of being a
responsible adult." I want to go to bed, let my mother do it. And so it
dawned on me that the most frustrating part right now is not about him or even necessarily the cancer itself
at all, but about my physical inability to rise to meet the occasion,
the limitations that post-polio sequelae put on my ability to care for him. Which does indeed frustrate the $#!% out of me.

And too that phrase encapsulates so much more about what's happening to us and our reactions to it. I find myself wistfully recalling times when we didn't know what we know now -- some times as recently as this spring, other times from the beginning of our relationship -- and wanting that innocence back. Not our youth or our health, even, just that sense that not only is today not threatened, but that there's always a tomorrow. I have even cracked to a high-school friend who asked if there was anything she could do, "Take me back to my childhood and leave me there." I don't want to be a responsible adult any more.

But I digress.

This morning what hit me first was the instructions on top of our dog's food storage container. I
left them there for the pet sitter, in case of another medical emergency like the one we had two weeks ago, but they
seemed this morning, at 6 a.m., to be a demand on me -- "Feed
TWICE daily," the stickers shouted. And it's on me to do it because Mr. Wood's fatigue is so bad that he can't reliably be counted upon to be out of bed before noon, and the animals can't wait. (Sometimes he doesn't get up all day. When he got out of the hospital, he slept 28 hours straight!) So I have been, for quite some time now, getting up 20 minutes early every day to take care of the animals before I leave for work.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

In Sunday's paper there was also a response by "Dear Abby" to a potential sexual assault victim that nearly made me blow my obstreperal lobe. The writer explained that she walks her dog in a park close to her house where a park employee is creeping her out with his staring. She would hate to have to stop walking there. Abby advises her that she's probably worried about nothing, and should ask other women if he creeps them out, too. Gee, she (Abby) sure would hate to see the poor guy lose his job if the writer were to make a complaint. Which, by the way, the writer never even mentioned. She had responded to the staring by being more deferential (smiling, saying "hi") and was looking for a more aggressive response -- how, perhaps, to confront the guy. Seriously, woman? In the first place, this park is close to Dog Walker's home. Perpetrators are known to place themselves in jobs, hobbies, and volunteer positions that give them access to victims. There was a guy around here some years back who worked for a car wash, enabling him to copy the keys of women in the neighborhood, you know, for easy entry into their handily nearby homes at a later date. Where he had followed them after detailing their cars. In the second place, living in a rape culture as we do, women are taught practically from the cradle not to make a scene. When I first started out doing rape crisis, I was
amazed to learn that self-defense instructors had to make their students
practice screaming. The women didn't want to do it. Couldn't do it. Our instructor told us that, among other things, women would not cross the street
to avoid someone whose demeanor concerned them, would not go into a
public place to avoid someone they believed was following them, would
not even confront someone who touched them inappropriately -- all for
fear of making a scene. Mind you, it doesn't make it a woman's fault when she gets raped: My point is that we are forbidden in this culture to act to protect ourselves, and Abby's perpetuating this with her response to Dog Walker. We are taught not to listen to our gut, not to make a stink when something's rotten in Denmark. The last thing we as women should be doing is blowing off each other's instincts that there's something just wrong about a guy.

In the third place, I purely do hate to see that the "Poor, Pitiful Rapist" syndrome (he's lonely, he's frustrated, he can't control himself, he's sick, he's crazy, blah, blah) is still alive and well. Of course this guy's not a proven rapist, but all the same, what's with all this concern about him?? This is not about him. This is about Dog Walker feeling threatened. He might be mute, Abby writes, or not speak English (although what this has to do with staring is beyond me*). Children stare because they don't know any better. But when someone or something higher up the food chain (be it a man or a leopard) stares at someone or something lower down (be it woman or mountain goat), it's a threat that's recognized across all species and so it has been for millennia. Yet just in case she might hurt his feelings or threaten his job or some such, Dog Walker's not supposed to say anything?

No, no, no, no, no -- a thousand times no, Abby. This man's right to creep women out -- for
any reason, harmless or otherwise -- does not trump Dog Walker's right
to feel safe in public spaces. You should have told her absolutely to quit walking her dog there, or at the very least to give
this dude a very wide berth and never be out when or where there's not
large crowds around. And even then. What's to stop him from following her to find out where she lives?

And further, Abby, you should have given her permission to tell anybody she damn well pleases about this guy, although I stress that she is not obligated to do so. She can tell park personnel office, security, other women, whoever she wants. It's her story: She can put up a billboard if she wants to.
She doesn't have to check with other women in the park first. If it turns out that it's only that he's mentally ill or intellectually handicapped, fine. Administration can put him in a
position or on a shift where so many demands aren't placed upon his
limited interpersonal skills. If he's some creep who was never backgrounded before he was hired, then better they know about it and deal with it now than later.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

And it's true, I do have a beef with psychology. My introduction to psychology was accidental, a story many of you have heard. I wandered into a psych prof's office when I was getting signed up for a business degree, and the rest, as they say, was history.

But these were academics. I got introduced to clinical psychology through Ann McAllister and Stuart Strenger, Ph.D.s who practiced together in Buckhead back in the '70s. They were wonderful clinicians and even better human beings, and I wanted to be like them when I grew up.

Twenty years later, I was surrounded by so many psychologists whom I could not even like, never mind respect, that I began to wish I'd never let my counseling license go. I no longer wished to identify with the arrogance, callousness, unscientific thinking, unprofessional behavior, and outright greed that I was encountering on a daily basis. The profession, however, I still loved. I was proud of the science of psychology. Psychology was already changing, however, and I can't say I like the direction it has taken. So while I am not quite ready to disavow it, I do have a beef. Once upon a time, the scientists in psychology were all rat-runners. The psychotherapists were all theorists. And their theories generally took into account the whole human being. Psychotherapy was an emotional, intellectual, psychological -- dare I say it? -- even spiritual journey that the therapist and patient/client took together. And then, along came Skinner. That was the start of our slippery slope. Don't get me wrong: Behaviorism is a damn good theory, and behavioral therapies have some great applications. But what happened next was that, coincidentally with our long-standing desire to be taken seriously as doctors came the push to be included in insurance reimbursement, to be classed as healthcare providers. And that, my dears, was the beginning of the end as far as I'm concerned. The number of mental illnesses we can diagnosis (and of course this is psychiatry's fault, not psychology's, but it stems from the same sources and we've been on board with it from the git-go) has multiplied astronomically from what it was 50 years ago. Everything's abnormal now, treatable, and most importantly from the point of view of many practitioners, reimbursable. The twin drives to be taken seriously and be paid as doctors has spawned the evidence-based practice movement, a child of the devil if ever there was one. Ironically, perhaps, it is also the part of the science of psychology with which I most identified in the early days. Why would we waste people's time and money, and offer false hope, for silly woo-woo therapies that don't work? Let's study what does! Sounds great, right? But somehow, in the process, we have reduced diagnosis and treatment if not to the level of the petri dish then to something scarily close to it.

Therapies are manualized. Follow this cookbook recipe with every client you have with this diagnosis, and they'll get better. It's pigeonholing clients, and reducing professionals to technicians. Everything, even assessment, is by the numbers. The person's humanity is out the window, all their experiences and dreams and complexity reduced to three symptoms from group A, two from group B, for a duration of not less than two years, and not due to some other specified disorder or circumstance listed in Appendix C.

Worse, the therapies don't work. Or they only work in the lab. One I got all excited about last year after a workshop turned out to be this sort of dud. Thirty percent of the potential participants in the big study its proponents were trumpeting were weeded out before the study ever started. They had more than one problem, or they were on medication, or whatever variation in their circumstances that normal human beings coming into clinician's offices every day exhibit. So at best, I'm thinking as I'm reading this, the new treatment works with 70% of people with this diagnosis, right?

Not so fast, Virginia. No fewer than 50% of the folk enrolled in the study dropped out! So now, if the new treatment helped every single one of the completers (which, of course, it didn't), we're talking about a therapy that is effective for 35% of the folk for whom a clinician might consider it. Thirty-five percent.

And yet this has now become the only approved therapy for this disorder.

I kid thee not. It works for maybe 35% of the population with this disorder, but if I don't deploy it with every one of them who walks through my front door, I will not be treating my people according to the standard of care, once this gets written into the standards, which it will. Mark my words.

Ironically, chasing the money has led us to fly directly in the face of the best and latest science, offering "treatments" that are absolutely proven not to work for "disorders" that are pretty much proven by now not to exist because they are lucrative. Jumping on the weight-loss bandwagon, as psychology has over the past year or two, is perhaps the best example.

I'm done.

I want to go back to sitting with my clients. And no, they're not patients. They're not sick! I want to go back to being with my clients, not sitting there trying to look attentive while running algorithms in my head or jumping ahead to what I'm supposed to say next according to the treatment protocol. I want to go back to the day when the therapeutic relationship was the primary healing factor, when my own best tool was my self, not a checklist with lines and boxes and graphs to complete to tell me what's the matter with the person. I want to go back to the day when my care was caring, not steps I followed in a manual, to a time when good therapeutic technique mattered, yes, but when there was an art to it.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

I'm reading the Sunday paper this morning and I'm all like, wha-a-at??

It seems that transcripts of some of Carson McCullers' sessions with her
therapist are being released to researchers, and everybody's all excited about how this will give them more insight into her life and art. Well, not everybody. I'm certainly not.

I'll give the therapist a pass on terminating the therapy relationship so they could have a personal relationship. This was the '50s, after all, and things were different then. In fact, they were so different that she might actually have been a bit ahead of her time in that regard. Most people back then didn't bother terminating one relationship before beginning another. I remember when I was just a young sprat of a therapist reading about one famous, leading psychologist who was therapist to a young woman, then her professor (presumably he mentored her into grad school), then her clinical supervisor -- and then her husband! Not sure when, exactly, they became lovers, but good grief. That's like a perfect trifecta of "dual" relationships.

But McCullers' therapist/partner lived until 2013. By which time it should have been glaringly obvious to her that those transcripts should have been destroyed -- back in the 60s, not to put too fine a point on it.

And the university that inherited and is releasing them bears some responsibility here, too, even though the actual custodians are likely academics in literature, not psychiatrists. They should have quietly destroyed them as soon as they realized what they had.

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______________________________________________The stories told here are all true, but they contain no Protected Health Information and people's identities are disguised.______________________________________________

Gotta Have a Disclaimer:

Although this is a professional blog, nothing herein should be construed as me speaking for my practice group, my school, my department, my profession as a whole or any of its professional organizations, my family, or my dog.

And another one. . .

I cannot and will not establish anything that looks even remotely like a therapeutic relationship with anyone via this blog. Not even temporarily.

This is a blog, and should not be mistaken for my actual practice. Please, if you need to talk to someone, get an actual therapy relationship going with somebody.

and gay adoption, too

American Psychological Association

"The mission of the American Psychological Association is to advance the creation, communication, and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives."